There is an increasing awareness of the requirement to protect children from inadvertently gaining access to pharmaceutical medications. However, this requirement is often balanced with the necessity to provide containers for medications that may otherwise may be readily and easily opened by an adult, i.e., any person having the cognitive ability to understand the instructions for opening a container requiring a certain manipulation and manual dexterity. Such persons are assumed, as well, to have the ability to understand that opening a container to gain access to the medication therein is a deliberate action, and is only undertaken when there is a necessity to attain access to the pharmaceutical medication contained therein.
In order to reduce the number of accidental poisonings resulting from young children having access to unsafe medicines, drugs and other potentially dangerous substances, considerable effort has been made toward developing child-proof safety packaging. To fulfill the criteria of a child-proof safety package, a container and cap or cover must be constructed in such a manner that the type of manipulation required to open the container to gain access to its contents is one that a young child is not capable of performing.
Often, such adults have the sufficient manual dexterity to open a container, but may suffer from a debilitating condition such as arthritis. Such persons may still desire to have their medications in containers that require specific manipulation and manual dexterity, and thus child-resistance, but with lesser physical effort.
There are several well-known child-resistant containers in the market that are capable of dispensing one or a plurality of dosage forms such as tablets, gel-caps, capsules, or the like. They include the so-called “arrow-alignment” closures or the “push-and-turn” closures. In both cases, the containers are of the standard cylindrical variety.
The push-and-turn systems require that the closure be pushed axially downwardly and rotated at the same time. Disadvantageously, very considerable force, which is often beyond that which can easily be exerted by arthritic patients, may be required. Moreover, the specific force required between two otherwise identical, push-and-turn closures and containers, often differs from one to the other.
A user of closures having the arrow-alignment systems often needs to have relatively good eyesight in order to properly align an arrow on the closure or cap with an arrow typically embossed on the container. Even after the arrows are aligned, a user may still need to exert a very considerable force to push up the cap away from the container, so as to remove the cap, which also may be difficult for an arthritic patient.
Currently produced pharmaceutical containers tend to be cylindrical in shape and not very space efficient. These containers may not be easily stacked except in an end-to-end fashion. Moreover, placement of a number of cylindrical pharmaceutical containers together on a shelf results in an inefficient use of the volume in which they are placed due to the spaces left between the curved cylindrical walls.
Another disadvantage associated with closures suitable for cylindrical tablet containers is that the closure becomes physically separated from the container upon opening. The closure may then either become lost, or in the event where multiple medications are being dispensed, may inadvertently be secured incorrectly or loosely secured onto the wrong container. Still further, there is also a risk that children may place the separated cap into their mouth, which might result in choking.
It would be desirable to have a child-resistant closure that is suitable for use in non-cylindrical shaped containers, that is not easily removed from its container, and that may be opened by adults who may have compromised hand strength.
There is a strong need for a system that allows nested bottles to be loaded onto a conveyor system for filling. The system of the present invention provides this and other advantages.
All too frequently, errors are made by pharmacists or their assistants in filling prescriptions. Some of these errors are caught by the patient who notices the difference in the medication compared to medication previously obtained for the same prescription. However, under certain circumstances, the patient may not notice the error. For example, the erroneous medication, e.g., a pill, and the correct pill may be similar in appearance, or the error may occur the first time that the prescription is being filled. In other instances, the patient may simply fail to notice the mistake because differences in the size and/or color of the pills are difficult to detect, particularly if the patient has less than perfect vision.
Errors in the filling of prescriptions can arise from a variety of circumstances. In many instances, the error can be attributed to the inattention of the pharmacist, particularly during times when there is a need to fill a large number of prescriptions. Also, the error can be occasioned by the lack of experience of the pharmacist with the particular prescription, or the general lack of experience of the pharmacist's assistant. Other errors can be caused by the similarity of unrelated pills in color and/or shape. Errors can also arise from name similarities, e.g., Feldene/Seldane, Lodine/Codeine, etc.